Dabitch.net - Everything is so random there must be a pattern

I was mainly using Pitas to practice refreshing how a blog could look, within the html and CSS limitations of decorating it.

I closed the blog properly today, as I haven't paid attention to it for a minute. And I actually forgot my password at some point...

Here is what it used to look like when I was playing around with the styles and colors.

The Collective did interviews with freelancers in their network, including myself where I spoke about Adland. Note how I reply "I started Adland", because I never did call it by the URL, however it was common for other people to mention the URL so that it could be linked.

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As well as an award-winning art director for brands like Smirnoff, Heineken and UNICEF, Åsk Wäppling is also the creator and webmaster behind one of the world's biggest advertising websites ad-rag.com. From her base inCopenhagenshe has turned what started into a daily web log into AdLand – a commercial-laden delirium of heaven and hell for advertising addicts around the world.

When, how and why did you come to start ad-rag?

I started Adland when I lived in San Francisco back in 1996. When I began surfing the web there was nearly nothing related to advertising out there, in 95 portfolios.com (still going strong!),zeldman.com, the University of Texasand J Walter Thompson were the advertising sites online worth their salt. There was also a copywriter, Dave Dumanis, who wrote weekly on his website called ad lib about advertising in early 96, which in hindsight must have been the very first sortof "pre-blog" adblog. Zeldman's ad graveyard, Dave's ad lib and the clear lack of websites that gabbed ads the way I wanted to inspired me to start my own site. The 'concept' of the website was to showads separated at birth, much like the ad graveyard shows ads killed by clients or circumstance. I learnt some basic HTML and I collected all the good ad related linksI could find on a page so that people who found adland could find more adstuff on the web. As time passed, I started posting my own long rants about the state of advertising, what it was like pounding the pavement with a portfolio looking for work and the pain of bad campaigns in a section named adrants, as well as excerpts from advertising books that I had read in the "adbooks" section. Later the commercial archive collection merged with adland in 2000. The whole thing grew quite organically, really.

How big is ad-rag now? (Members, hits and number of ads, etc)

Oh god, it's mind-boggling really. More than 23 million people have peeked at the site since we started counting in May 2000, god knows how many saw the incarnations before that, there are more than 56 thousand members and there are almost 30.000 TV commercials collected in the archive right now. But the numbers change every as new people sign up and more curious onlookers stop by.

Did you ever think it would have become as successful as it has?

Sure, I daydream a lot but I don't think I ever pictured anything like this really. Back in '96 sitting in a very spartan room (I had only a mattress for a bed and a radio I bought at a garage sale for entertainment) ranting on about ads that seemed to be stolen straight off the pages of last years awards book, I wondered "is there anybody out there who thinks like I do about advertising?" and creating the crummy little site was my way of trying to find out and find some like-minded ad obsessed ad pals. I felt a little lonely and wanted to meet other ad-nutters, share tips tricks gossip and opinions, which is still the basic idea with the site, as it is a huge community of ad-nutters now.

The answer is, yes there are lots of people who share the same ideas about advertising in general, Badland ads in particular, work ethics and so on, as well as smart people who have other points of view and weirdos who send hate mail saying something like "Why rant about ads when there are children starving in Africa?". It did feel like it took a long time before advertising people in general actually went "online", so to speak, in the beginning, few creatives could be found roaming say the Usenet groups or similar hangouts like mailing lists. After the marketing people found the Internet things changed quite fast. One thing seems to be very slow in taking hold, I always wanted to talk to the ad-world, as it is the worldwide web, right? But few see it that way and limit their reports geographically, as if that makes a difference in this day and age.

You seem to be online 24/7 and eat and drink advertising. What makes you so passionate about it?

I think my mum dropped me on the head when I was a kid. Ha! I have this tape I made in 1979 where I sing songs for my grandparents, up until the point where there is a commercial break on TV. Abrupt silence, all you hear is me breathing for a second, and then I break out into a "ring around the collar?" monologue and recite the entire advert before snapping out of it and return to making my tape. Clearly, ads always had my complete and undivided attention. Like anyone who loves anything, I want it to be the best that it can be. Advertising is too often trite, annoying and bad, when it could be information to the right target, entertainment for the right group and the pop-culture glue that keeps a company and their customers together. I love ideas. I love stories. Great advertising has both. Bad advertising has none.

What's next for you and ad-rag.com?

Well, already done Manhattan. Now let’s take Berlin. ;)

Thanks to Ask for answering our questions. She’s expecting her first child in October and we wish her all the best.

The Globe and Mail wrote about "All ads, all the time - only on-line" here and it's archived here.

Maybe you like watching foreign commercials. Or you're an aspiring copy writer hoping to break into the ad business. Or you saw a particularly offensive ad last night and you're wondering where to complain.

Well, you're in luck. You can indulge virtually all of your ad-related desires from the safety and anonymity of your computer. Nobody needs to know your idea of fun is looking at vintage pantyhose ads.

The Internet has spawned a Web site for every ad fetish imaginable. Want to check out cigarette ads from the 1950s? Click to adflip.com. Curious to see which commercials won at this month's International Advertising Festival in Cannes? Try adreview.com or adforum.com, among others.

And if you want to know what insiders think about the business, try adrag.com, a Web site "by the adgrunts for the adgrunts."

• ad-rag.com

Hosted by someone named DABiTCH, this is a good place to get an insider's view of the ad business, warts and all. The site was down yesterday, but it offers links to articles, news, book excerpts and some very funny U.S. Bud Light radio ads. Be sure to check out the section called badland, which lists examples of ads that are remarkably similar to each other.

I don't StudlyCap "Dabitch" and Adland was clearly still called that, despite the URL as you can see in this Waybackmachine 2001 snapshot. The tagline changed at each reload, and varied between a few like "Adland, by the adgrunts for the adgrunts" and "Welcome to Adland - truth on advertising" and similar.

Tess Wilkinson-Ryan outed us in Creativity Magazine back in 2001.

"Dabitch is back"

... and Åsk Wäppling, an Art Director by day and maverick industry commentator by night. Wäppling is the mistress and founder of ad-rag.com, a web destination for industry news, gossip and rants; her online persona is called "Dabitch". The site is very popular with ad insiders, despite (or thanks to) its many caustic comments.

Technically, it's not complicated. It is a simple contact form website. But it does show off our unique business cards. Our brand is party as a religion, and our business cards are hand-stamped headlines on old confirmation cards that we had sourced at a fleamarket. The front of the cards have different headlines, while the back of the cards has our titles and contact information.

The website simply uses a javascript (below) to show the front and the back of the cards on rollover, while sending a mail to the person you chose to contact when you click the image.

This is what the website looked like in April of 2001.

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"Speaking of the stock market, that's the unique 2nd market condition I mentioned earlier. As we all know, the market is suffering from a major dot com fallout right now. Weak and unprofitable dot coms are shutting their doors by the dozens and pink slips are being handed out coast to coast. That's leaving the survivors scared and shaken, and I hate to sound like a circling vulture, but this scenario is not a bad thing for online media buyers!
To find these falling dot coms, one does not have to venture much farther than one's own PC. Of course, there are the news sites, which lately seem to relish in describing the latest dot com demise. But if you want to have a little more fun with your research, you might want to check out some of the more acerbic sites like f--kedcompany.com (I'm respecting the PG rating of this list), iTulip.com, or Ad-Rag.com."

You can find this email preserved in internet-amber here in the web archive.

Adformatie, the dutch advertising tradepress, linked both Adland and the Commercial-archive in one go in issue 38, August 2000, that was back when we kept the commercials on a separate domain. You can find the adformatie blurb in the Internet Archive here.

**"Seven hours of viewing pleasure" **

Commercial Archive brings together as many television commercials as possible for seasoned enthusiasts . This website now offers "seven full hours of viewing pleasure" with mainly American commercials. The commercials are arranged alphabetically and by subject and can be viewed or downloaded in streaming video. Commercial Archive is one of the advertising sites hosted by DaBitch. The same host is also responsible for Adland , a somewhat messy collection of advertising gossip, jokes and discussions.

I have just been honored with the title "bitch of the year 2000".. :) Thankyou thankyou! *cries a little tear*.. I'd like to thank my mother.....

Original post was at ego.pitas.com and looked like this: